Jab Tak Hai Jaan

My second Bollywood film and first at the cinema, Jab Tak Hai Jaan holds special significance for the Indian film industry as its famed Director Yash Chopra who won four Filmfare Best Director awards during his career, died just a couple of weeks before the film’s premier on 21^st October 2012.  There are dedications to him both before and after the film which show a vibrant and seemingly healthy 80 year old Director behind the scenes, crafting both a film and friendships. His final film is a romantic drama about a poor Indian living in London called Samar (Shahrukh Kahn) who falls in love with a rich girl called Meera (Katrina Kaif). The story is told over ten years and at times feels as though it is in real time but is told through a young wannabe Journalist called Akira (Anushka Sharma) who comes across a journal detailing a fascinating story of love and heartbreak. The journal belongs to Samar, now ten years older and a commander in the Indian Army Bomb Disposal unit. Akira takes an interest Samar’s story as well as the man himself.

My Name is Khan

My Name is Khan is a film that comes tantalisingly close to perfection but misses out due to a mixture of a disappointing third act over simplified view of the world. Nevertheless it is an excellent film, telling the story of a pre and post-9/11 world through the eyes of Indian’s living in America.

Rizwan Khan (Shahrukh Khan) is a mildly autistic Muslim man who moves to America after the death of his mother in India. There, he meets and falls in love with a Hindu woman Mandira (Kajol) who works as a successful hairdresser in San Francisco. The film is split into three very distinct acts with the first being an often light hearted, cute and funny look at romance, tolerance and love. Khan says that the western world views history in two epochs; BC and AD but he would add a third, 9/11. Following 9/11 the lives of the Indian characters, whether Sikh, Hindu or Muslim change for the worse as racial profiling, racist attacks and xenophobia takes hold thanks to the anti-Muslim hysteria of the post-9/11 world. There is an appalling tragedy around the halfway mark which sets up the third act in which Khan travels America to meet the President and tell him “My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist”.